This is more than a lie. This is the badge of membership in the "woke:" club, in the "trans" fad.
A man with intact genitalia and a beard and no history of questioning his gender mutters to himself, "I identify as a woman." If you want to be a member of the club, you nod vigorously and agree. Yes! He identifies as a woman therefore he is one!
He can go into a woman's lavatory and masturbate into the sink. He can go into a rape crisis center and renew the trauma of everyone there. He can be put into a woman's prison and rape biological women. Because that inaudible mutter was all that was required to make him a woman.
Yes, it really is this bad.
And anyone who denies his womanhood is "transphobic" and will be banned from Medium, fired from his job, lose his research credentials at a university.
Let me state it aloud:
A "trans" woman is not a woman.
A "trans" woman is a man impersonating a woman.
Whether his womanhood is based on nothing more than an inaudible murmur a few minutes ago, or the commitment of surgical gender reassignment, he remains a man. If after his death his skeleton is exhumed and analyzed, there will be no equivocation over his sex: he was a man.
Interesting analysis of the mystic angle, and a tip o' the hat for the reference to Meister Eckhart.
But while I certainly see the parallel to mysticism, I think it is only that, I don't believe that womanhood has overtones of pyramid power or pointless speculation on the nature of god. Because after all is said and done, despite the passion of faith and the willingness of the faithful to kill or die for it, god does not exist.
Women do.
Biological sex is one of the most unambiguous qualities there is, common to all higher phyla of both plant and animal kingdoms. The "trans" cult is reduced to regarding developmental defects as other genders, so weak is their argument.
Funny how much we hear about "trans women" and how rarely about "trans men." Maybe it's because the surgery is so much less successful. The fad that started around 2006 overwhelmingly afflicts girls, while real gender dysphoria is 3:1 in boys. At least a "trans woman" can have a caricature of female genitalia, I don't know how well this works in the other direction and frankly don't want to.
But this isn't mysticism, this is an extension of postmodernist folly, the foundation of which is the denial of objective reality. "Trans" activists will get up and walk out of a room, will end an interview, at the suggestion that there even is such a thing.
It's almost as unnerving as seeing good people become MAGA cultists to see educated people attracted to this nonsense.
Edit: when a right-wing bigot like Matt Walsh emerges as the voice of reason, a lot of people need to get their oil checked
Since telepathy is fictional, language is all we have to bridge our minds. And the abutments of that bridge are agreement on the meanings of words.
If we accept redefinition of words, especially essential ones, by cults with agendas or by plain stupid people, then our ability to communicate falls apart.
"The idolization of what it means to identify as female requires us to dehumanize what it means to literally be one."
Thank You. My son is a trans man and I adore him. And he is an adult human female. Both women and trans men are adult human females; both men and trans women are adult human males. That is a simple statement of verifiable fact.
My son has sex dysphoria. He is also autistic. I believe these are both neurological disorders with some overlap. For my son, medical transition has provided great relief - but just as not all people with a binge eating disorder need a gastric bypass (and it doesn't always work) not all people with sex dysphoria need medical transition. But ONLY those who medically transition should be referred to as trans - the rest are trans trenders who trivialize the lives of actual trans people.
Biology matters.
And it matters most to females, including trans men.
Female human beings, regardless of how they identify, are far more affected by their biology than male human beings in terms of reproductive risks and complications, and physical vulnerability to male violence.
Why don't trans activists ever ask themselves what would happen to a trans man in a men's prison?
Because females don't exist to these people.
We are, as you said, mystical beings - like Native Americans (in both cases, being "promoted" to mystical being leads to dehumanization, erasure, and violence).
Anyway, thank you for all the brave work you do.
The TRA's are doing terrible harm to female human beings and to trans women by imposing their silly metaphysical beliefs in law and fueling backlash against people like my son and like your lovely friend, Lois.
However, there is NO intrinsic meaning to the word "woman" -- as with most if not all words. We can define that term any way we wish -- pay it extra as Humpty Dumpty put it. The question then is which definitions make the most sense, are the most useful for whatever objectives we have in mind.
More particularly, we could define "woman" as "adult human XXer", or "adult human vagina-haver". Then the categories are, in fact, more or less immutable, and possess some "hard-edged" criteria for category membership that could serve to control access to toilets, change rooms, and sports.
But the problem is that many people seem to think that Moses brought the first dictionary down from Mt. Sinai on tablets A through Z. And that that particular definition for "woman" holds pride of place thereon -- under the big W -- and thereby qualifies as gospel truth; says so in the Bible, Genesis 5.2 in fact 🙄.
It is maybe great that Posie Parker drew a line in the sand with her championing of that particular definition -- the writing on the wall in more ways than one. Though she seems to have back-tracked into more wooish definitions herself of late, apparently because of her recognition of the attendant problems. But don't think we're going to resolve the transgender clusterfuck -- which is more or less subsumed under the question of "women's rights" -- until we're prepared to address and recognize some underlying, but quite important principles.
This is more than a lie. This is the badge of membership in the "woke:" club, in the "trans" fad.
A man with intact genitalia and a beard and no history of questioning his gender mutters to himself, "I identify as a woman." If you want to be a member of the club, you nod vigorously and agree. Yes! He identifies as a woman therefore he is one!
He can go into a woman's lavatory and masturbate into the sink. He can go into a rape crisis center and renew the trauma of everyone there. He can be put into a woman's prison and rape biological women. Because that inaudible mutter was all that was required to make him a woman.
Yes, it really is this bad.
And anyone who denies his womanhood is "transphobic" and will be banned from Medium, fired from his job, lose his research credentials at a university.
Let me state it aloud:
A "trans" woman is not a woman.
A "trans" woman is a man impersonating a woman.
Whether his womanhood is based on nothing more than an inaudible murmur a few minutes ago, or the commitment of surgical gender reassignment, he remains a man. If after his death his skeleton is exhumed and analyzed, there will be no equivocation over his sex: he was a man.
This is the truth. Gender ideology is not.
Interesting analysis of the mystic angle, and a tip o' the hat for the reference to Meister Eckhart.
But while I certainly see the parallel to mysticism, I think it is only that, I don't believe that womanhood has overtones of pyramid power or pointless speculation on the nature of god. Because after all is said and done, despite the passion of faith and the willingness of the faithful to kill or die for it, god does not exist.
Women do.
Biological sex is one of the most unambiguous qualities there is, common to all higher phyla of both plant and animal kingdoms. The "trans" cult is reduced to regarding developmental defects as other genders, so weak is their argument.
Funny how much we hear about "trans women" and how rarely about "trans men." Maybe it's because the surgery is so much less successful. The fad that started around 2006 overwhelmingly afflicts girls, while real gender dysphoria is 3:1 in boys. At least a "trans woman" can have a caricature of female genitalia, I don't know how well this works in the other direction and frankly don't want to.
But this isn't mysticism, this is an extension of postmodernist folly, the foundation of which is the denial of objective reality. "Trans" activists will get up and walk out of a room, will end an interview, at the suggestion that there even is such a thing.
It's almost as unnerving as seeing good people become MAGA cultists to see educated people attracted to this nonsense.
Edit: when a right-wing bigot like Matt Walsh emerges as the voice of reason, a lot of people need to get their oil checked
Since telepathy is fictional, language is all we have to bridge our minds. And the abutments of that bridge are agreement on the meanings of words.
If we accept redefinition of words, especially essential ones, by cults with agendas or by plain stupid people, then our ability to communicate falls apart.
Resist this.
"The idolization of what it means to identify as female requires us to dehumanize what it means to literally be one."
Thank You. My son is a trans man and I adore him. And he is an adult human female. Both women and trans men are adult human females; both men and trans women are adult human males. That is a simple statement of verifiable fact.
My son has sex dysphoria. He is also autistic. I believe these are both neurological disorders with some overlap. For my son, medical transition has provided great relief - but just as not all people with a binge eating disorder need a gastric bypass (and it doesn't always work) not all people with sex dysphoria need medical transition. But ONLY those who medically transition should be referred to as trans - the rest are trans trenders who trivialize the lives of actual trans people.
Biology matters.
And it matters most to females, including trans men.
Female human beings, regardless of how they identify, are far more affected by their biology than male human beings in terms of reproductive risks and complications, and physical vulnerability to male violence.
Why don't trans activists ever ask themselves what would happen to a trans man in a men's prison?
Because females don't exist to these people.
We are, as you said, mystical beings - like Native Americans (in both cases, being "promoted" to mystical being leads to dehumanization, erasure, and violence).
Anyway, thank you for all the brave work you do.
The TRA's are doing terrible harm to female human beings and to trans women by imposing their silly metaphysical beliefs in law and fueling backlash against people like my son and like your lovely friend, Lois.
Oh look: it’s the Madonna-Whore complex again. Yawn.
"One of the most baffling aspects of the gender identity movement is the inability of its adherents to define the word 'woman.' ...."
Amen to that. ICYMI, Helen Joyce had a rather amusing and quite detailed elaboration on the theme:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200714210100/https://quillette.com/2020/06/20/she-who-must-not-be-named/
And relative to your "faux mystical—turn", quite a good article over at Law & Liberty that takes a shot at DictionaryDotCom's equally wooish "turn":
"The word belongs to each and every woman—however they define themselves,”
https://lawliberty.org/woman-defined/
However, there is NO intrinsic meaning to the word "woman" -- as with most if not all words. We can define that term any way we wish -- pay it extra as Humpty Dumpty put it. The question then is which definitions make the most sense, are the most useful for whatever objectives we have in mind.
More particularly, we could define "woman" as "adult human XXer", or "adult human vagina-haver". Then the categories are, in fact, more or less immutable, and possess some "hard-edged" criteria for category membership that could serve to control access to toilets, change rooms, and sports.
But the problem is that many people seem to think that Moses brought the first dictionary down from Mt. Sinai on tablets A through Z. And that that particular definition for "woman" holds pride of place thereon -- under the big W -- and thereby qualifies as gospel truth; says so in the Bible, Genesis 5.2 in fact 🙄.
It is maybe great that Posie Parker drew a line in the sand with her championing of that particular definition -- the writing on the wall in more ways than one. Though she seems to have back-tracked into more wooish definitions herself of late, apparently because of her recognition of the attendant problems. But don't think we're going to resolve the transgender clusterfuck -- which is more or less subsumed under the question of "women's rights" -- until we're prepared to address and recognize some underlying, but quite important principles.